Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Cubs Managers in the All Star Game

The managers in the All Star game are the pennant winning managers from the previous season. No news there. The last time the Cubs won the pennant was 1945. No news there either, though it is painful to have to type that. That means that the last Cub to manage the National League All Stars was...

the 1945 manager, Charlie Grimm.

WRONG!!!

Let's try again. The last Cub to manage the All Star game was....

....Dusty Baker. Dusty won the pennant in 2002 as the Giant's skipper. He left San Francisco after the season and took over the Cubs for the 2003 season. But he was still entitled to manage the All Star team in '03 and he did so in Cubbie Blue.

And how did the NL do that day? They did great, until the 8th inning (perhaps foreshadowing another 8th inning meltdown by a Dusty-led team later in the year). The NL blew a 6-4 lead and lost 7-6.

Dusty was the 3rd Cubs manager to lead the NL in the midsummer classic. How did the other skippers do?

In 1936, Cubs manager Charlie Grimm led the NL stars...

...to a 4-3 victory!

Three years later, in 1939, Gabby Hartnett...

...was at the helm of the NL squad that fell to the AL 3-1.

In 1946 it was....

...Charlie Grimm again as the NL head, and in Cub-like fashion, the team got slaughtered 12-0, the most lopsided shutout in All Star history.

That makes the Cubs managers 1-3 in All Star competition---pretty much the way you figured it would go, right??

1 comment:

The first All-Star game was in 1933, which was a year after the Cubs went to the World Series. John McGraw piloted that team instead of the Cubs skipper. The rule about the previous year's WS managers evidently wasn't in place at the time.

But...the Yankees' manager wasn't across the field in the AL dugout, either. Connie Mack was.

About Me

I am a life-long Cubs fan currently in exile in southern Michigan. I have been collecting baseball cards since the fateful Cubs year of 1969. I took a 15 year break from the hobby and returned in 2008.